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The Party of "No"

Technorati and Me

Technorati is indexing me again! They had to make a code change to fix
the problem with my blog getting stuck in their queue. Kudos to Eric M.
and the guys at
GetSatisfaction.com
where they have "community powered support for Technorati".

Well, they're "sorta, kinda" indexing me anyway. It's on a 24 hour tape
delay or something. So I never get picked up by Memeorandum because they
pull from Technorati and Technorati has stuff I posted yesterday
listed as my latest blog entry. And that's old news to Memeorandum.

Wankers.

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But then a liberal priest friend pointed me at an
Op Ed from that noted Catholic theologian E.J. Dionne and another, even
more troubling
column printed in the National Catholic Reporter.

"Take these comments seriously," he said.

As if I would do anything else!

And I read both. I'd encourage you to do the same.

But when I got to this passage, well let's just say I stopped taking the
comments as seriously as my friend had probably intended.

When considering the position of the church on any issue, it's important to
remember that the bishops are not "the entire picture."

A fuller picture of how Catholics have discerned moral truths in the past
would include a "tripod" of views: those of the hierarchy, the "magisterium of
the theologians," and the "grace-filled, experience-filled wisdom of the
faithful."

Good grief, it's the Lutheran heresy writ large! Popular opinion
carries equal weight to the Magisterium? And what's the "magisterium of
the theologians" anyway? Do scholars issue encyclicals now? Or does His
Holiness The Pope still confer authority to a theologian by virtue of extending
his blessing to their work?

The number of those who have decided to neglect the official church teaching
might also say something about how Catholics have decided to give weight to
their own consciences when evaluating a question of morality.

While "it is logically possible that the vast majority of Catholics stumble
into mortal sin" by neglecting the teaching on birth control, it is also
possible that many "gave the matter serious thought," used "all of the
resources at our disposal for formation of conscience," and came to a decision
that "this teaching is not binding on my conscience."

If there is a better, albeit inadvertant definition of Cafeteria Catholicism,
I haven't seen it. Let your conscience be your guide, because the
bishops are just some random dudes with no inherent authority. So long as
you've given the matter "serious thought" you're good to go!

This is going to be a long post. Because I'm just getting warmed up, and
there is so much wrong here that I don't know where to start.

Obama thought he had his bases covered. He found some ostensibly "Catholic"
organizations to endorse his faux compromise. Father Z calls them
the Magisterium of Nuns.

What I mean by that phrase is a hitherto loose — now coalesing — group
of catholics in organizations and as individuals who are setting themselves up
as an alternate teaching authority, "magisterium", over and against the
legitimate authority of bishops. Why "of Nuns"? Because they key figures are
women religious, such as Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association
— who gave cover to catholics in Congress to vote for Obamacare and Sr.
McBride in Phoenix who approved a direct abortion at a catholic hospital, and
a coven of other women religious who have set themselves against Catholic
doctrine concerning the exclusive ordination of men, contraception,
homosexuality, etc.

It's no coincidence that Sr. Keehan's endorsement of Obama's compromise was
trumpeted by the White House itself. Alas she embodies a significant problem
within the Church. The Magisterium of Nuns has no ecclesiastical authority.
Yet they have accumulated considerable gravitas, granted by their schismatic
relationship with the secular power structure in Washington, DC. They give
cover to Obama when he,
to quote Mark Steyn, "decided to go Henry VIII on the Church's medieval ass."

Politicians who consider themselves Catholic but collaborate in "the assault
against their faith" should remember they will one day have to give account
for their acts before God, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois said Feb 10.

"There is a last judgment. There is a particular judgment. May they change
their minds and may God have mercy on them," he told CNA during his visit to
Rome.

Both Sebelius and Rep. Pelosi have been at the forefront of attempts to force
Catholic institutions to cover contraception, sterilizations and abortifacients
as part of their staff's health insurance plans.

Bishop Jenky said there are too many Catholic politicians in the U.S. who
"like to wear green sweaters on St. Patrick's Day and march" or "have their
pictures taken with the hierarchy:" or "have conspicuous crosses on their
forehead with ashes" but who then "not only do not live their faith they
collaborate in the assault against their faith."

I read somewhere that Secretary Sebelius is already forbidden from receiving
Holy Communion due to her unabashed pro-abortion activities while governor
of Kansas.

It is awkward, of course, for our bishops to excommunicate people for
challenging their administrative decision (to fight the mandate), or even for
attempting to coerce Catholics into supporting evil, when the same bishops
have been unwilling to excommunicate the same persons for contradicting the
Church's moral teachings, giving grave scandal, and wreaking widespread havoc
in society as a whole. It almost seems selfish; it is almost like saying we
don't care how much you hurt yourself and others as long as you do not attack
your bishops.

At the same time, the direct attack on the bishops through the HHS mandate is
marvellously clarifying. If there were any ambiguity before, that ambiguity
has been removed by the effort to coerce rather than simply ignore the Church.
Further, just because the bishops should have acted more decisively long ago
does not make it wrong for them to act decisively now, especially in response
to a further provocation. Sometimes it takes a decisive moment to get people
to shift direction, but when they do shift direction, they start doing many
things that their timidity has prevented in the past. If the bishops have
really reached their decisive moment, they will show it by fighting with
more than mere words.

Yes. It is time to take the gloves off. Catholic politicians have gotten a
pass for far too long. Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy Pelosi have traveled far
beyond the bounds of Canon 915. Formal excommunication is more than warranted.

The pseudo-magisterium of cafeteria catholics must be
neutered post haste.

Some may be wondering who is going to win the battle for authority in the U.S.
Catholic Church: The pseudo-magisterium or the bishops. I know one thing for
certain: Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the
Church, so where does that leave the pseudo-magisterium and it's followers?